8 Chinese Idioms With the Number Two (二/两)

Two goals with one action

Literal: One stone two birds

A calque rather than a classical idiom: one (一) stone (石), two (二) birds (鸟), taken into Chinese from the English 'kill two birds with one stone' by way of the Japanese 一石二鳥, during the decades of heavy borrowing around the turn of the twentieth century. It is worth knowing precisely because it feel...

Fierce competition between equals

Literal: Two tigers fight

Bian Zhuangzi meant to kill two tigers that were fighting over an ox, and was told to wait: the big one will be hurt and the small one killed, and he would then take two tigers at the cost of one strike. He waited, and did. The Records of the Grand Historian tells it in an argument about letting two...

Essentially the same despite appearances

Literal: Half catty eight taels

This idiom depends on the old Chinese weight system, in which one jin was sixteen liang rather than ten. Half a jin (半斤) is therefore exactly eight liang (八两) — the same quantity, named two ways. The phrase is not about approximate similarity but about strict equality dressed up as difference, and i...

One of a kind; unique

Literal: Unique one without a second

Alone (独) one (一), and without (无) a second (二). Both halves make the same claim and the doubling is the emphasis: not rare, not the best of its kind, but the only one there is. That absoluteness is why it cannot be graded — nothing is more 独一无二 than anything else. Chinese uses it of people, of expe...

Kill two birds with one stone

Literal: One action two gains

One (一) action (举) and two (两) gains (得). 举 is a single lifting or raising, the smallest complete unit of doing something, so the arithmetic is stated as plainly as it can be: the cost was paid once and collected on twice. Chinese uses it constantly, and it is worth distinguishing from 一石二鸟, which i...

Different methods, equally good results

Literal: Different tune, same skill

Han Yu wrote in the same essay that Yang Xiong and Sima Xiangru were of the same (同) workmanship (工) though their tunes (曲) differed (异) — 同工异曲, which reverses into the modern form. 工 is craftsmanship and its result, so the claim is about achieved quality rather than intention. The phrase is used wh...

Essentially the same with minor differences

Literal: Largely same, slightly different

The Zhuangzi preserves Hui Shi's distinction: things broadly alike and slightly unlike he called the small sameness-and-difference, and the fact that all things are both wholly alike and wholly unlike he called the great one. The idiom keeps the first half — largely (大) the same (同), slightly (小) di...

Two brothers of equal merit; now often said ironically

Literal: Difficult elder and younger brothers

This is from the Shishuo Xinyu, on the two sons of Chen Shi, of whom it was said that each was hard (难) to be the elder brother (兄) of and hard to be the younger brother (弟) of — neither could be ranked above the other. Read that way it is high praise. The character 难 was later taken in its other se...